Ocean not all that separates US, European fans

FILE - In this May 12, 2013, file photo AC Milan players Mario Balotelli, left, Kevin Prince Boateng (10) stand on the pitch during a stoppage in play in a Serie A soccer match between AC Milan and AS Roma, at Milan's San Siro Stadium. The game was stopped for almost two minutes because of racial abuse by Roma fans towards Balotelli and Boateng. (AP Photo/Antonio Calanni, File)
— AP

FILE - In this May 12, 2013, file photo AC Milan players Mario Balotelli, left, Kevin Prince Boateng (10) stand on the pitch during a stoppage in play in a Serie A soccer match between AC Milan and AS Roma, at Milan's San Siro Stadium. The game was stopped for almost two minutes because of racial abuse by Roma fans towards Balotelli and Boateng. (AP Photo/Antonio Calanni, File)
/ AP

FILE - In this Sunday May 12, 2013, file photo, AC Milan players Kevin Prince Boateng, left, and Mario Balotelli look toward the stands during a stoppage in play in a Serie A soccer match between AC Milan and AS Roma, at Milan's San Siro Stadium. The game was stopped for almost two minutes because of racial abuse by Roma fans towards Balotelli and Boateng. (AP Photo/Lapresse, Davide Spada, File) ITALY OUT— AP

FILE - In this Sunday May 12, 2013, file photo, AC Milan players Kevin Prince Boateng, left, and Mario Balotelli look toward the stands during a stoppage in play in a Serie A soccer match between AC Milan and AS Roma, at Milan's San Siro Stadium. The game was stopped for almost two minutes because of racial abuse by Roma fans towards Balotelli and Boateng. (AP Photo/Lapresse, Davide Spada, File) ITALY OUT
/ AP

Imagine Derek Jeter leading the New York Yankees off the field because opposing fans were yelling racial slurs and throwing bananas at his team. Or a game between the Miami Heat and Chicago Bulls halted because of unrelenting race-baiting from the crowd.

It's almost unfathomable to a U.S. sports fan, even with the country's long, wrenching and seemingly endless struggle to achieve equality. Yet scenes like that play out at European soccer stadiums with alarming frequency, the product of a toxic mix of culture, ideology, geographical proximity, economics and alcohol.

"It's an interesting contrast," said Orin Starn, chair of the cultural anthropology department at Duke University. "America had to go through the civil rights movement, and we went through a national crash-course in race relations and racial sensitivity - to the point in public culture that we're painfully correct. It's really different in Europe. Europe has not gone through the same kind of process of public debate and painful reckoning with questions of race and difference."

Two weeks after a match between Roma and AC Milan in Italy's top soccer league had to be halted for almost two minutes because of racial abuse by fans, European soccer's governing body will ask its 53 members on Friday to adopt a series of sanctions aimed at curtailing racism. One of the proposals UEFA will consider would force clubs to close sections of seats after racial abuse by fans, escalating to a complete shutdown for additional incidents.

At FIFA's annual congress, May 30 and 31 in Mauritius, the world governing body will consider throwing teams out of competitions, or even relegating them - forcing them into a lower division - if their players, officials or fans are found guilty of any form of discrimination.

"If UEFA were to do something like ban viewers or really clamp down on them, it might work to some degree," said Andrei S. Markovits, a sociology professor at the University of Michigan and expert on sports culture in the United States and Europe. "But this is not a state issue. It's what we call a civil society issue."

Despite the publicity they get, the incidents of racial intolerance occur only sporadically. But they are ugly when they do. They're not limited to soccer, either. Spanish golfer Sergio Garcia apologized again Wednesday for saying he would "serve fried chicken" if he'd have dinner with Tiger Woods.

But soccer is the common language throughout much of the world. And while Americans are passionate about their sports - how else to explain kids camping outside Cameron Indoor Stadium for weeks just to get Duke tickets? - there are fundamental differences in how fans in Europe and elsewhere and the United States come by their loyalties. That helps explain why bigotry can exist so publicly in one place and not the other.

In Europe and other parts of the world, teams often were originally affiliated with a religion or political party rather than a city, said Markovits, who examined the issue in a 2011 article in the Harvard International Review, "Sports Fans Across Borders: America from Venus, Europe from Mars." So when rivals face each other, it's as much a triumph of an ideology as it is the final score.